PORT TOWNSEND — In 2004, a sailor named Mel Miller bought a paver for the Compass Rose to support the capital campaign of the planned Northwest Maritime Center.
Miller designated that the name of his boat, Perpetua, and the date it was launched, 1936, be inscribed on the stone.
The next year, Miller died, and his friends, wanting to do something in his memory, went together and bought another paver.
Its inscription: “Capt. Mel Miller, 1925-2005, Your Dock Friends.”
Those pavers are two of 1,500 stones set last week in the Northwest Maritime Center’s compass rose in the commons, a waterfront plaza that is taking shape in front of the two center buildings at the end of Water Street.
Scheduled to be officially unveiled at the Wooden Boat Festival in September, the eight-point Compass Rose not only shows the cardinal directions, but is also a mosaic of North Olympic Peninsula life.
“People put their names, and the names of their spouses, their children, their grandchildren, their pets and their boats on the pavers,” said Len Goldstein, the center’s capital campaign manager.
Spouses’ names, however, sometimes create a problem. When the Northwest Maritime Center staff started selling pavers seven years ago, the project was emerging from the planning stage.
When construction started last year, Goldstein sent out an e-mail asking people to confirm their message before she sent the order to the company inscribing the stones.
She got several responses from couples who had purchased a paver with their names on it, then got divorced.
“One man called and said he forgot to respond to the e-mail by the deadline,” Goldstein said. “When I read him the two names on the inscription, he said, ‘That’s my ex-wife.'”
Goldstein tried to be accommodating. But making the changes, plus making sure everyone’s inscription was correct in the first place, was a perfectionist’s nightmare.
“A typo in a book is one thing,” she said. “An idea of a typo on an engraved stone — that was the cause of many sleepless nights.”
The length of time worked in the center’s favor with a former Port Townsend resident who bought 13 pavers, the most for one person. He bought half in 2002 and half last year, Goldstein said, so now has one for each of his children, grandchildren and in-laws. Others were ordered by a parent to mark a daughter’s wedding. Some are love notes to spouses or were dedicated to spouses as a surprise from the buyers.
“They plan to bring the husband or wife over and show it to them,” Goldstein said.
That will be during the Wooden Boat Festival in September, when the plaza, called First Federal Commons for the saving and loan’s $50,000 donation, will be open to the public. Of the 1,500 pavers purchased in support of the project, Port Townsend residents accounted for 745, almost half of the total.
Port Hadlock residents bought 39; Port Ludlow, 38; Port Angeles, 25; and Sequim 20.
Off the Peninsula, Seattle residents accounted for 117 pavers; California, 43; New Mexico, 4; and Canada, 4, Goldstein said. The paver purchaser from the farthest away: Jonas Goodall of Denmark.
“He was at the Wooden Boat Festival last year and saw us selling them,” Goldstein said.
Other issues that arose: A Seattle resident bought five pavers, one for each of his grandchildren, who live in Port Ludlow. The problem — the youngest child hadn’t been named yet, so the grandfather made up a first name to put on his paver, she said.
Goldstein herself came up with a solution to another dilemma. A Canadian, Chris Higgins came to the festival booth and wanted to buy a paver. When Goldstein pointed out that a staff member, also named Chris Higgins, already had a paver with “The Chris Higgins Clan” on it, he said, “That’s what I was going to put on my paver.”
“So I suggested, just jokingly, that he put “The Higgins, Eh!” on it,” Goldstein said, “and he loved the idea. So he did.”
Celebrity pavers include the one Katie Smith of Port Ludlow bought for her daughter, Chimacum High School graduate Kirsten “Kiwi” Smith, the “Legally Blond” screenwriter whose latest movie, “The Ugly Truth,” opened this week.
It has Kirsten Smith’s name with “Writer-Filmmaker” underneath.
Designed by Miller/Hull, the 1,500 pavers arrived in mid-July from PaverArt in New Jersey on 13 pallets, with sections put together like a jigsaw puzzle, Goldstein said. A surveyor was brought in to orient the Compass Rose to true north — magnetic north varies — and work began last week. Standing on the south point at night, a person looking at north point, 50 feet away, then straight up, will see the North Star, Goldstein said. After the pavers are set in place, a binding sand will be added to seal the work, site supervisor Korey Smith said.
Talking with people and learning the stories behind the stones was the best part of the project, Goldstein said.
“People who are doing it for a loved one will talk to you,” she said. “They want you to know why that person was important to them.”
Goldstein’s own paver is the name of her and her husband’s boat, QuickBeam. Her favorite inscription, however, is the one by Wooden Boat Foundation volunteer Johann Thaheld: “Whenever you get a chance to write your name in stone, take it.”
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Port Townsend reporter Jennifer Jackson can be reached at jjackson@olypen.com.
